Peace of Mind Organizing

It's easier to keep up than to catch up

30 May 2016

I’ve gotten behind in my data entry for Quickbooks, my financial software. I hate it when that happens. I put the blame on my puppy, Bix, who turned everything upside down when he joined our family in December. I let the receipts pile up and soon they were overwhelming. (Okay, I know it’s not fair to blame my adorable puppy for my shortcomings.)

Finally, this Memorial Day weekend, I’m getting caught up. It’s not exactly how I wanted to spend the holiday weekend, but I’m really glad to get it done.

(Oh, and I’m sure you’re wondering why I don’t automate the data entry. I don’t have a good reason beyond that I like how I do things. Manual data entry makes me feel really in touch with my finances and, unless I let myself get behind, it works really well for me.)

The weird thing is, I don’t mind doing bookkeeping. I even like it a little. (And I have no interest in hiring a bookkeeper.) But slogging through everything when there’s a five-month backlog becomes drudgery. It got me thinking about how much easier it is to bookkeeping on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. Here’s why:

• The information is fresh, so entering it is a no brainer. (Four-month-old deposits can sometimes be head scratchers, despite my best efforts to notate everything.)
• The pile of receipts and other information to work on is unintimidatingly small.
• When I’m caught up on my bookkeeping I can run reports and really know where I stand.

The benefit of making frequent, small efforts isn’t limited to finances, of course. Doing routine tasks regularly, instead of letting them build up, helps with filing, decluttering, cleaning, and many, many other tasks. For example, I wipe my bathroom fixtures with a Lysol wipe daily so my bathroom doesn’t get gross soap buildup.

I’m going to finish catching up with my bookkeeping and once I’m current, I’m going to try hard not to get behind on my Quickbooks again. I can’t wait to start generating some reports!

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